Still Standing: The Savage Years (22 page)

It was the summer of 1984 when Lily Savage first reared her head properly for the first time and, typically, it all happened by accident rather than design. Andy, a friend of mine, worked in the bingo hall in Kennington, and on his nights off, being an industrious soul, he pulled pints behind the bar of the Elephant and Castle in Vauxhall.

I mentioned this establishment in my last book and to call it rough would be a gross understatement. It was here that the detritus of south London society gathered to drink. The majority of acts refused to work at the Elly as, apart from the notoriously lousy fee, it was seen as the last chance saloon, the place you ended up in when you couldn’t get work anywhere else. This was damaging for the reputation of an act who fancied themselves as ‘quality’, as pub managements might just question why they were paying you decent money when the Elly was getting the same thing for a quarter of the price.

Hush didn’t subscribe to this attitude. Work was work as far as he was concerned, and when John, the current manager, asked if he’d like to compère the Ladies’ Night, an amateur drag competition that had been held every Tuesday night since the place had first opened its doors, he jumped at it. I
couldn’t believe it at first. Hush on a microphone? Talking? The same Hush who used to flee if anyone so much as went near him with a mike? I was full of admiration for his daring to go live, if not secretly a little envious. After all, if Hush could do it then why couldn’t I?

The evening of his debut as presentatrice of the Elly’s Ladies’ Night, Doris, Chrissie and I went down to support him. The pub was busier than usual, with familiar faces we normally only saw in the audience of the more ‘respectable’ pubs dotted among the usual crowd of crazies, dossers, drunks, dog-rough trannies and tough little rent boys. Dickens would’ve loved the Elly. Hush sat at the back of the stage on a high stool like a hot-house flower in a broken-down greenhouse full of weeds, resplendent in a magnificent red wig (freshly teased to within an inch of its life that afternoon) and a shimmering sapphire-blue evening gown. He took delicate little puffs on a menthol cigarette and introduced the acts in clipped, ‘refined’ tones as each one lumbered out on to the tiny stage, in the manner of a directrice of a smart Bond Street fashion house revealing this year’s spring collection.

The acts had to be seen to be believed. Some of them made the exhibits in a Victorian freak show look like the models in an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue, a fact Hush was fully aware of yet chose to ignore, sending them up kindly yet remaining consistently supportive. A continuous stream of large vodka and tonics was sent up to the stage from behind the bar, and the more Hush drank the more he relaxed and the funnier he became, and consequently he was a riot.

Tuesday nights at the Elly were picking up, thanks to Hush. Throwing himself wholeheartedly into his new role as compère and mother hen, he would patiently try to smarten
up his ladies, running up costumes for them out of remnants of fabric he had lying about the flat and bringing new life into their desperate old wigs.

‘You can’t polish turds, wench,’ he’d say, ‘but you can disguise them by rolling ’em in glitter and sequins.’

‘We need extra bar staff,’ Andy told me as he stood at the pump pouring me a pint of cider. ‘Tuesdays in particular. It’s getting busy.’

‘I wouldn’t mind a job behind the bar,’ I replied in a moment of insanity. I certainly didn’t need another job, having two already, but a couple of nights behind the bar would be fun. It would be a laugh working with Andy, John and his partner Colin and I fancied the idea of working at the notorious Elephant and Castle. Had I been a deb I’d have said it was deliciously low but as I’m not now and wasn’t then I just saw it as a rough pub, and as I’ve always been drawn to the more seamy side of life the more I thought about it the more the idea appealed to me. Besides, I had a safety net, it wasn’t a career move, I was free to leave at any time.

‘D’ya hear this, John,’ Andy shouted down the bar in his broad Glaswegian accent. ‘Savage here is interested in applying for the job.’

John looked up momentarily and muttered something unintelligible, then returned to rooting around the till in search of something.

‘Well, I’m the best offer you’ll get. I’m a highly experienced barman,’ I said indignantly to his back, suddenly aware that I wanted this job.

‘I’ve worked behind bars for years,’ I went on, adding for effect, ‘I was trained at the Royal Air Force Club.’

To be turned down for a job at the Elephant and Castle
public house was unthinkable. I had to get this job now. It was a matter of principle.

‘If you’re serious,’ John spluttered, ‘I’ll think about it. I’m not taking you on only for you to leave after one session.’

It took me all night to persuade him I meant what I said and that I was prepared to live and die in the service of the Elephant and Castle. Eventually, worn down by my nagging, he gave in, telling me, still a little reservedly, that I could start on Sunday night.

The moment I set foot behind the bar of the Elly I regretted ever opening my big mouth. Some of the customers left a lot to be desired and there was certainly no time for any of the ‘fun’ I’d imagined I’d be having. I didn’t stop all night. This crowd could really drink, particularly the lot in the back bar, the haunt of the gentlemen who resided in the men’s hostel next door and who were mostly pissed, argumentative and troublesome to serve. If they got really out of hand then we’d throw them out, only for them to run round to the door of the front bar to try to get back in. Their attempts would then be thwarted by Campella, the incredibly camp but ferociously tough bouncer.

As John had predicted, after one session I wanted to quit – but rather than prove him right I kept my own counsel, gritted my teeth and got on with it.

Hush suddenly decided that he’d had enough of hosting Ladies’ Night and left, but his succession of replacements weren’t very good. In fact, on the whole they were appalling.

‘Jesus, I could do better than that,’ I moaned to Andy as we emptied out the dishwasher. ‘These dogs that they’ve got in since Hush left are shocking.’

‘Why don’t you then, hen,’ he said, avoiding the steam
from the machine. ‘Get yourself up there. Go on, I dare you.’

The matter was brought up again after the pub had closed and we were gathered around the bar having ‘late gates’. After a lot of persuasion and a quantity of whisky and Coke I agreed to give it a go, unwittingly changing my life in an instant.

I didn’t give it much thought until a few nights later when, coming out of Vauxhall tube station on my way home from work, I saw a crudely drawn poster in the window of the Elly proclaiming ‘Tuesday Night Ladies’ Night. Compère Lily Savage’. My stomach turned over. Why the hell do I keep opening my mouth without first considering what I’m about to say? It always leads me into situations that I later regret. And this was one of them. How was I going to get out of this one?

‘Oh, shurrup giving out,’ Chrissie said when I got home and told him my predicament. He was sitting in front of the gas fire in his vest and boxers eating toast and smoking simultaneously in an armchair that I’d never seen before. ‘D’ye like me chair?’ he simpered, flicking his ash in the direction of the gas fire. ‘It was in a skip at the top of Fentiman Road. It’s shocking what people throw out, there’s nothing wrong with it.’ He stood up to reveal his latest acquisition in all its glory. ‘Look at it,’ he said proudly, brushing toast crumbs off the cushion. ‘Why would you throw this out?’

‘Maybe it was something to do with the shitty green colour and the wobbly wooden arm,’ I said. ‘Or maybe it’s haunted, somebody could’ve died a terrible death in that chair.’

‘Haunted, me arse,’ Chrissie said dismissively, giving the cushion one last brush down. ‘Don’t start that game.’

Chrissie was terrified of ghosts and all things supernatural.
He couldn’t even watch the tamest of horror films and would have hysterics if he heard the violin chords that accompanied the stabbing in the shower scene in Hitchcock’s
Psycho
. I once arranged all the furniture in the middle of the front room and piled the kitchen chairs on the table after he’d gone to work. When I got home I found him standing in the hall still in his overcoat, afraid to move in case the poltergeist threw something at him, and when I eventually confessed that I was the poltergeist he never spoke to me for a week, which was nothing new as we were always falling out.

‘Anyway, forget the chair, what are you going to do about the Elly?’ he asked, closing the subject of haunted furniture. ‘You’ll have to go on, you’ve said you would.’

I had to agree there was no backing out now and I’d have to get on with it.

‘Who knows?’ Chrissie said, firing his Parthian shot as he swanned off in the direction of the bathroom. ‘You might even be good … although I don’t hold out much hope.’

On the big night, which came round far too quickly for my liking, I got ready in a room over the pub. As I painted the slap on I tried to think of things to say but my mind was too preoccupied with the task ahead to start coming up with gags. Andy and John kept appearing with words of encouragement and a supply of cider, and certainly not calming my nerves with the news that the pub was filling up nicely.

‘Look at you!’ Chrissie screeched as he came into the room with a large whisky in one hand and a carrier bag in the other. ‘You look like a right old slag.’

I was meant to. I’d eschewed any attempts at glamour and opted instead for the uniform of the full-blown whore: a short black plastic mac with an even shorter leopard-print miniskirt
underneath, each arm covered in a multitude of jangling bangles with garish ropes of multicoloured beads around my neck, topped off with an enormous confection of peroxide ringlets and artfully placed curls.

‘Here, I got you this from work,’ Chrissie said, producing some sort of dead animal out of the carrier bag. ‘They were going to chuck it out but I saved it as I knew you’d love it.’ He was working in C. & W. May, theatrical costumiers in Covent Garden, now long gone and replaced with a Waterstone’s bookshop. May’s expansive basements were a veritable Aladdin’s cave and when Chrissie and I were on good terms we’d spend hours trying on the costumes. I was in my element parading around as a White Russian officer one minute and Queen Elizabeth I the next. Chrissie, even though he claimed to be an atheist, preferred the clerical look, admiring himself in the mirror in the robes of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The dead animal turned out to be a mangy fox fur.

‘Throw it over your arm,’ Chrissie said, shaking it violently to remove any dust. ‘It’ll look really whorey, not that you need much help in that department.’

When John came upstairs to tell me it was time to go on I felt like Ruth Ellis with Pierrepoint, only she probably didn’t laugh nervously and make inane remarks to cover her terror as she was led to the scaffold, which in my case was the stage. I stood by the toilets trying to look cheerful and confident as the DJ introduced me, silently chanting the mantra I’d used since childhood and always reverted to in times of stress: ‘Please God, let me get through this and I’ll never be bad again …’

God was obviously manning the hotline that night because
for the two hours I was on I did more than get through it, I had one of the best times of my life. Something happened the moment I stepped on that stage, my personality as I knew it became warped and amplified a thousand times and I transformed into a knowing, louche and satisfyingly empowering character, coming out with the kind of talk I’d never thought I’d dare say in public in front of a packed pub. I’d reckoned attack was my best form of defence and so, suspecting every member of the audience of being a potential heckler, I tore into them one by one, hopefully establishing the ground rules.

With my conscience tucked safely away in bed, I was free to make no concessions and went for the jugular, tearing anyone foolish enough to try their hand into little pieces. I had no option to be anything less than evil-tongued. To show weakness in the face of the enemy would be disastrous and the stage of the Elephant and Castle was certainly no place for cissies. They ate their young alive in there.

What astonished me was the speed with which I delivered these put-downs. Where was I getting them from? Satisfyingly pithy ripostes seemed to be effortlessly spewing out of me with the rapidity of a tommy gun and to the audience’s increasing delight. It was all very edifying.

A drunken woman who had been shouting inane remarks all night made her way to the front of the stage with a little man in tow. At first I wondered if she was bad drag as she was over six foot tall while her partner, who just about came up to her waist and looked for all the world as if he’d been cast as a comedy Asian in an unenlightened Dick Emery sketch, seemed incongruous standing beside this hulking creature who was as wide as she was tall. For a moment I found myself wondering what they looked like together naked in bed, an obscene image that I quickly banished from my mind.

‘I’ve got something every queen in here wants,’ the woman shouted proudly.

‘What’s that, love? Penicillin?’ I asked.

‘No, a fuckin’ ’usband!’ Oh, she was rough. I felt like a character from Jane Austen compared to her. ‘We only got married yesterday and he goes like a rabbit. Bin on me back all day,’ she bragged in a voice like a foghorn. ‘D’ya want to see my ring?’

I didn’t need to reply to that one. Pulling a wry face was sufficient to bring the house down.

This woman was a comedy gift but as I looked at her seemingly placid and inoffensive Borrower-sized groom, gazing up adoringly at his blushing bride, her flush brought on by alcohol rather than innocence, I wondered where the attraction lay. What chemical reaction had gone on here to bring such an unlikely couple together? What pheromones were they squirting at each other to induce such sexual attraction? To quote my mother again, ‘Every pan has a lid …’

‘Isn’t anyone in ’ere going to buy us a bloody drink then?’ she bellowed. ‘Help us celebrate me marriage?’ The groom looked up at me, probably dislocating his neck in the process, and grinned drunkenly.